green haze through spring rain nets cloud reflected glass walls in perfect symmetry of pink and white translucent petals trembling with beads of fractured gold illuminating chlorophyll windows a thousand thousand times shimmering shimmering gentle drops down
May 4, 2021
I am a butterfly (I wrote, so long ago)
but only the worm part.
(I had no wings.)
We're all larvae (I suppose) at first.
Bloated neonates spilling milk-like
from the lips of proud opportunists
bursting with individualized pressure
differentials as familial as overripe fruit.
But my own squirming made no end.
I spun no cocoon in which to pupate,
to mature.
I remained instead an ugly,
useless thing.
A parasitic load of bad math.
A function of prone contemplation over
a mouthful of dirt,
unpalatable even to a hungry bird.
(I have no wings.)
But (perhaps) a life forged in the
interstices of other people's momentary
lapses can still be a pretty good life.
And so we've come to an arrangement,
myself and my liberty,
an exchange of time and space for a spiritual
stipend conducted by direct-deposit to an
opportunity-cost ATM.
(We don't get in each other's way out
of mutual respect.)
There's no longer any benefit in my doubt,
no half measures in my cups,
no pity in my patter,
but no matter how small (smaller,
smallest) I get,
I still can't afford the
premium on regret.
So I cut coupons,
trimming affectionate sales for a course
in Friendship and trading in the dog-watch
for a footsore list I'd otherwise do without.
(I cant these days.)
I'm no butterfly (nor worm,
I suppose).
Granny knotted puppet strings are all
the flightless aviation I can manage in
between twice divided transactional
assets of emotional freight.
(Ask around!)
But that doesn't make me a failure.
No.
I will blink out unhindered,
a sort of self-sufficient land-bound
crustacean pinked by a circulating
reminder of the original amnion.
(I do tend to forget.)
And in the meantime I will follow in my
own hesitant sidesteps a path forged by
its own absence.
(How can I do otherwise?)
Sensitive instruments require
sensitive recalibration.
I hum.
Buzz.
Shimmy and flutter.
(I'll never fly.)
I watch with compound eyes a
kaleidoscopic mosaic of past and present,
unable to translate impulses into any
fixed point,
a blind spotted future standing at the
intersection of tissue and electronic traffic.
I described it once.
I opened my mouth and words flowed
through me as if it were not me speaking,
as if the sounds were born as nakedly
tressed as Athene,
unincubated in their first fragile moments,
untended after by a loving overseer,
unguided by lighted road markers toward
their destination before being committed
to the execution of the soft palate.
I was given a name. For this phenomenon
is one wholly unfamiliar to me.
It was called.
I heard. (I'm not. But I could be.
Sometimes.)
To be.
(I already am.)
April 23, 2021
carpe diem you spring canaries! you
miser's ministers drawing closed
the curtains on the new mint-
ed day. how easily you step
aside
back
out
with
draw
ab
stain
remove your
selves from any risk taking
chances stepping in
side front and
center with
us
me
our go
ahead!
i'll walk alone, out of earshot, and
treasure dust for honesty.
better yet, i'll fly to stronger wings than
yours, you flapping lips, you phantasmal
featherweights, and leave you to your
own devices of self-service and
obdurate loyalty to be pre-
served like corks in a bottle.
me? i've got no background no
retreat no hallowed palace
full of old companions to
sustain me if i turn away
from a hand out-
stretched to
take my
own,
so
i
piece together a
constellation of bright-eyed
polestars to guide my steps
through weedy fields
of indifferent
strangers
to
teach me how to love! how to
appreciate the human capacity for being
in a state of grace, how to lift my eyes
beyond the universal accident that un-
folds ever outward in waves of chance
and portent, like hands grasping
(take my hand)
and let-
ting
go
and grasp-
ing other hands
until love fills in the gaps left
behind by the rearing of apes by apes,
until there are no broken souls,
until there are no wounds too deep to heal,
until we can release each other's pain with
an unwavering gaze, a word, a touch, until
no one of us is ever again pierced by the sin-
gular agony of forsaken loneliness. so
come talk to me. walk with me.
we're kin. for a moment. for-
ever.
for
now.
April 17, 2021
is this in the service of love?
these thoughts, these words, these actions?
am i loving freely, with an encircling heart,
embracing joy and grief alike? can i make
space for a friend? to speak, to feel, to find
a way out?
how do you put it into words? the answer is
that you don't have to.
i will stand in that fictitious space
where all receding points meet.
where the two-headed coin spins
because joy and grief are the same,
because an overflowing outpouring
stamp on the heart is an imprint of
letting go that has to be set free,
to fall, to fly. i stand aside. i will
hold you with open arms. i'm here.
i will meet you where you are.
is this in the service of love?
when i speak let my words come from my
better self.
when i listen let my heart be open to the
wisdom of other hearts.
when i act let compassion alone be my guide.
to forgive, to uplift, to let go.
to fall or fly.
to be free.
always in the service of love.
March 31, 2021
when annihilation changes the equation and unnumbered pinion feathers no longer uplift the soul but pierce the heart and set it adrift in a foreign body as joy melts in the mouth of grief and the future thins into trans- parency invisibil- ity disappear- ing into an endless inescapable present a wheel that spins and spins until everything looks the same until there is no refuge for a refugee until there is no exit except the last exit until the beam shifts and the calculation corrects itself and some one some where is lost.
March 29, 2021
King Lear's fundamental flaw was never
pride. nor arrogance. nor vanity.
it was only that he was a man
who had grown old.
no one needed him.
not his wives, who were dead. nor
his daughters, who were married or
about to marry. not even his country,
whose reins he was entrusting to
younger men.
King Lear had become superfluous.
a man who was no longer
a man.
until that final moment, when
he was granted one last chance
to shine as a father,
as a king,
as a man.
and failed.
March 29, 2021
the sun broke through gray clouds for the space of three breaths i looked up i felt looked upon acknowledged visible for the space of three months i will not soon forget
March 26, 2021
Bless
ed atheist child
less mother un
amazonian leather
ized vegan andro
romantic dyke
chic metal
step Shakespeare re
mix minimum wage
gap ex
feminist none
binary former
trans
monster
hunter
cat
lady
fabulous
(identity)
free
freak
in forty
seven
different
flavors.
March 19, 2021
i stand at the vanishing point i
disappear inside pitted angles of
straight lines i can't grasp the
traps my involuntary skin pinched
across a blush
a
splash
a crease
seeps
between
lips that
speak in unending
silence a red ring of
bull's eye!
furrow
untorn
unseamed
a pool's heart in
sticky winter a
brass echo of
copper after-
taste in
yellow sunlight
little.
yellow.
narrow legs
and
gym socks
running
out
cut away
spine
knuckles
knee caps
elementary organs
bottled
labeled
compartmental-
analyzed
sealed
sifted
severed
tendon
bone
eyelash
remade in the after-
image of some afarensis gorgon
grass eater
dragging scarlet
fleece with
clipped finger-
tip nerve
endings a
stunted
breathless
hollow a
quiet space
between unwanted
angles as
straight
lines
disappear
into
silent
footfalls
in the wet
night.
March 18, 2021
bright morning walking soaring i see you taking wing your solid footsteps on concrete high above those of ordinary men in your voice in the tiniest tip of your finger surpassing by a giant's leap the modern day's diluted definition of courage in your eyes in your bootlaces in every word you speak every word you write every quiet contemplative moment on your walk to work on a bright morning you will soar you will take wing
March 12, 2021
